Finding God
in anger and bitterness nick donnelly
All booklets are published thanks to the generosity of the supporters of the Catholic Truth Society
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Contents Not All Tears are Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Learning the Ways of your Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Let Jesus Heal your Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Fr Seraphim Rose and the Tears of the Heart . . . . 48 How to Help the Healing of your Heart . . . . . . . . . 61
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Not All Tears are Evil
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here is a passage in J R R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the meaning of which I have pondered over for the past forty-seven years since I first read it as a twelve year old boy. It occurs at the very end of the final volume, The Return of the King, when close friends face the shock of realising that they must say farewell to each other for the final time. Tolkien writes: Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middleearth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.1 As a school boy I just didn’t understand the phrase, “for not all tears are an evil”, because then the only tears I knew were those caused by the illnesses, and the scrapes and blows of childhood. The rare times I cried, I felt better for it. How could tears be evil? However, as an adult, experience has taught me the meaning of Tolkien’s enigmatic phrase “for not all tears are an evil”. Of course, I still experience ‘good
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tears’: the gentle tears of mourning for loved ones whose deaths have been peaceful and a timely release; tears of joy at the beauty of creation and God’s grace; tears of laughter with friends, and, sometimes tears of healing contrition. But I have also come to know tears that are evil: tears caused by personal betrayal; crushing disappointment, and, overwhelming grief. Tears that can be the outward sign of passions that can so easily turn to evil: to seething anger; burning resentment; cold hatred, and, dark fantasies of revenge and destruction. Bitter tears that become the gateway to grave sins. When sin crouches at the door Who hasn’t felt sin crouching at their door as a consequence of rage, envy, or desire for vengeance, no matter how fleeting these feelings? So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gn 4:5-7) If we focus for the moment on betrayal, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist, explains that betrayal, especially by those closest to us, is the
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worst thing to happen to a person. This is because consequent emotions of bitterness, rage, resentment, vengeance, hatred, even murderous hatred, can make life for ourselves and those around us hell on earth: You plunge into that underworld space, and that’s also where you begin to nurse feelings of resentment and aggrievement and murder and homicide, and even worse. If people are betrayed enough, they become obsessed with the futility of being itself, and they go to places where perhaps no one would ever want to go if they were in their right mind. And they begin to nurse fantasies of the ultimate revenge, and that’s a horrible place to be. And that’s hell. That’s why hell has always been a suburb of the underworld, because if you get plunged into a situation that you don’t understand, and things are not good for you anymore, it’s only one step from being completely confused, to being completely outraged and resentful, and then it’s only one step from there to really looking for revenge. And that can take you places – well, that merely to imagine properly can be traumatic.2 Our choice: benign anger or malignant anger? The psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980) makes the distinction between “benign aggression” and
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“malignant aggression”, between the “passion of anger” and “destructively aggressive acts”. Sometimes feeling angry – benign anger – is the appropriate response to an evil or a threat, because anger instantly tells us the truth of the situation and gives us the energy to react to it. Brooding anger – malignant anger – is different for a number of reasons: we obsessively dwell on the injustice; fantasise about revenge and retaliation, and, take pleasure in our sustained emotion of anger and at the prospect of hurting others. Deliberate and intentional betrayal at the hands of a husband or wife, brother or sister, or close friend can be rightly perceived as a life-threatening attack that causes physical, psychological and spiritual harm. Anger at the injustice and harm of betrayal is a natural and justifiable response of self-protection. The Church recognises the importance and value of passions, such as anger in the face of such evil: The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man’s heart the source from which the passions spring (Mk 7:21)… The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.3
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Having said this, everyone is faced with a choice when caught up in the passion of anger to either ‘master’ it and thereby benefit from its insight and energy, or intentionally allow it free rein to become malignant aggression. In every occasion of passion there is a moment of self-knowledge and choice: Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.4 Alastair Campbell, an expert in pastoral care, concludes that faced with a culture that fosters and incites destructiveness, Christians must even more embrace the challenge of severing the “lethal link” between our own feelings of anger and the impulse to destructive aggression.5 St Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians, advises that the way to break the lethal link between anger and destructiveness is to make it a personal priority to speak truthfully about our anger as soon as possible, and thereby stop anger becoming hate: “Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are members
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one of another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” (Ep 4:25-27) Don’t give the devil his opportunity A daily diet of bitterness, resentment and fantasies of revenge takes us into the sphere of influence of the devil. I learnt this personally following a series of upsetting events recently that occurred one after the other over a matter of months. My hard won career was derailed, my income reduced to almost nothing, and significant friendships broken. As a consequence, every morning I woke up to an electric shock of anger and a succession of revenge scenarios playing out in my mind as if projected onto a screen. I had to shake myself to break free from these obsessive thoughts and get on with my day. I half-heartedly prayed for the grace of forgiveness, but, to be honest, I took pleasure in my heightened emotion of anger and my dreams of revenge. The truth of the matter is, we easily delight in evil, particularly when we feel justified as the wounded party. This is one of the clearest signs of the influence of concupiscence on our behaviour. “Concupiscence” means “intense desire”, and describes the fact that, at times, we experience an intense desire to commit sin. Due to original sin “human nature, without being
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totally corrupted, is wounded in its natural powers. It is subject to ignorance, to suffering, and to the dominion of death and is inclined towards sin.”6 We all have an inclination to evil, an attraction to sin, and, in my case, I delighted in imagining taking revenge on my ‘enemies’ who had hurt me. I did not follow the advice of St Paul and instead I let many suns go down on my anger. As a consequence I placed myself in the way of being harmed by the devil. St Ignatius of Loyola observes in The Spiritual Exercises that the devil is like a general of a demonic army, who inspects the “fortifications and defences of a fortress” and “attacks it at its weakest point”: “…the enemy of our human nature makes his rounds to inspect our virtues, theological, cardinal and moral, and where he finds us weakest and in greatest need as regard our eternal salvation, there he attacks and tries to take us.”7 The devil and the demons have had millions of years to study human beings, giving them the knowledge of how to work on the weaknesses of each one of us. Fr José Fortea, the exorcist, writes that “a demon can be at our side for a very long time, analysing us and coming to know our particular weaknesses. He will seek to tempt us at our weakest point”.8 Since the deaths of my two children, Gabriel and Ariel, my weak point is a temptation to suicide. I have
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taken a deep wound to my spirit with the deaths of my son and daughter. My own understanding is that death, especially the tragic deaths of children, puts the survivors into the sphere of influence of the devil. Scripture tells us, “God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living… It was through the devil’s envy that death entered the world” (Ws 1:13; 2:24) and the devil “has the power of death” (Heb 2:14). Following the series of personal blows I gradually experienced again, with growing intensity, the temptation to commit suicide. I didn’t want to have this thought, and when I noticed it I pushed it away, but the temptation came back the next day. I told my priest that I was experiencing this temptation to suicide. He asked me did I want to act on this thought, and I emphatically responded that I did not, that it felt like something alien that was intruding into my life. He concluded that I was suffering demonic obsession, a form of demonic attack, described as being besieged by the devil through emotional pressure, pressing in on a person.9 There and then he administered the sacrament of the sick, and I haven’t been bothered by this temptation since that moment. Looking back, I can see that the demon found an opening into my life as a result of my sinful response to betrayal. My own toxic mix of resentment, rage
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and hate lowered my defences and the demon saw his opportunity and worked away at a deep wound. I thank God for the healing I received through the sacrament of the sick at the hands of a priest who took seriously the reality of demonic attacks. Following my healing I reached out to those who had hurt me, and as a consequence my relationship with some of them has been somewhat repaired, and is now open to the possibility of deeper healing. Jesus wants to heal your broken heart In light of my own experience of deep healing through the sacrament of the sick, I know for certain that Jesus wants to heal all broken hearts. He came down from heaven to heal man’s heart, and through his incarnation he knows with his human heart the evils that break ours. Jesus wept over the evil in our hearts: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Mt 23:37; cf. Lk 19:41-44) Jesus cries tears of compassion looking down on Jerusalem, not tears that presage bitterness, rage, and plans for revenge. The Catholic philosopher, Peter Kreeft, describes Jesus as the “tears of God”.10
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Our Lord embodies the Most Holy Trinity’s tears of compassion for each one of us, despite our rejection and betrayal of God. Neal Lozano, a Christian healer and teacher, believes it’s very important that we realise that God loves us so much that our betrayal breaks his heart. God is not aloof and indifferent to our sufferings. Those who have experienced the agony of losing a child, or the anguish of the deep betrayal of someone you thought loved you leaving you, know something of the Father’s heartbreak: Many of you have experienced deep pain over your children and know how this feels. Some have lost a child to a premature death, cancer, addiction, isolation, depression or suicide. In these experiences, you have felt a portion of the excruciating pain and agony that afflicts the Father’s heart. In Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, the Father’s heart was portrayed in the moment of Jesus’ death; the camera pans out to a view from the skies, and a teardrop forms and falls to the ground. When I saw this, I wondered, when did the tears of the Father fall? Did the Father weep only for Jesus, or did he also weep for Adam and Eve at the moment they fell into sin? …Likewise, did he weep only for Adam or for every one of us who were still in Adam?11
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As I discovered, he weeps for us all. The sacraments are the physical expression of God’s compassion for each one of us – we are healed by the tears of God. Not all tears are evil: prayer reflections Not all tears are evil – but some can be. Why do I weep? • Dwelling on resentment or despair, choosing malignant anger, can allow the devil an opening he will exploit. What do I do with my anger? • God longs to heal us and wipe away every tear. Am I prepared to let Christ heal me? Lord, remove the bitterness of my anger, the despair of my anger. When I am weak and in torment, purify me and strengthen me to resist evil and its pain and influence. Hold me in your heart and wipe away my tears until that day when there will be no more weeping and you will be all in all. Amen.
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Learning the Ways of your Heart
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he heart of man – my heart and your heart – is the focus of all the Most Holy Trinity’s words and deeds that drive the whole sweeping history of salvation. The Father’s outpouring of revelation and grace, culminating in the incarnation of his Son, and bestowal of sacraments through the Holy Spirit, has one purpose – to change our hearts, made hard by sin, into hearts of flesh capable of genuine love, capable of receiving his Spirit. Why is the heart, and not the mind, the focus of God’s activity? Though secular materialists would have us believe that the brain produces the mind and sense of self, God’s word tells us that the heart is the innermost centre of the person. There are over one thousand references to the heart in Sacred Scripture describing the interior life of man, our ideas, feelings and sense of self.
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Common phrases from modern everyday language show that people still place the heart as the centre of the self. People can be described as ‘hard-hearted’ or ‘soft-hearted’, ‘good-hearted’ or ‘bad-hearted’, ‘kindhearted’ or ‘mean-hearted’, ‘warm-hearted’ or ‘coldhearted’. There are many heart words to describe love – ‘lose one’s heart’, ‘heart-ache’, ‘touched my heart’, ‘stole my heart’. Heart language is also used to describe the virtues and vices of a person: ‘braveheart’, ‘stout-heart’, ‘big heart’, ‘heart of gold’, ‘black heart’, ‘cruel heart’. The most personal conversations between people are referred to as speaking ‘heart to heart’, and ‘opening up one’s heart’. The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarises this perennial understanding of the role of the heart in our interior life: The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or biblical expression, the heart is the place “to which I withdraw.” The heart is our hidden centre, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.12
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Man is a unity of body and soul In coming to understand the heart as the dwellingplace where ‘I am’, we remember that man is a unity of body and soul.13 This means that it is often not possible to distinguish between the physical heart and the spiritual heart, because both interact and influence each other. Anyone who has felt how the joyful ache of love makes his or her physical heart race knows this, or anyone who has experienced how fear for the safety of a loved one contracts the heart in agony, knows that the physical heart and the spiritual heart are inextricably linked. It is true that you can die of a broken heart. Doctors have identified an illness called ‘broken heart syndrome’ otherwise known as Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, caused by intense grief or emotional shock that so damages the heart that it changes its shape. Approximately three thousand people suffer from it in the UK, mostly women, 70% of whom developed it following the sudden death of a loved one. Between 3% and 17% of sufferers die within five years of diagnosis, but for most it is temporary and reversible. From this we see that medical science is uncovering the connection between the physical heart and the spiritual heart. We are symbolic beings expressing our interior life of emotions and thoughts not only
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with words, but also through our bodies. Our faces are in almost constant movement expressing and emphasising emotions and thoughts. Many of us use our hands as an impromptu sign language of feelings and ideas. In our own experience of the interior life many experience the physical heart as the symbol of the inner self, a coincidence of our physical heart with our spiritual heart: “The heart, as well as being a physical organ in our chest, represents symbolically the focal point of our personhood as created in the image and likeness of God”.14 The eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung gives an account of his conversation with a chief of the Taos Pueblos Native Americans, Ochwiay Biano, which I have found very useful in understanding the heart and my sense of self: “See,” Ochwiay Biano said “how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are all mad.” I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad. “They say they think with their heads,” he
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replied. “Why of course. What do you think with,” I asked him in surprise. “We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.15 When I was newly married I asked my wife a question, thinking of this passage in Jung’s autobiography. I asked her, where did she experience her sense of self, where did she sense the centre of her self-awareness and self-reflection? I had not told her about Jung’s conversation with Ochwiay Biano. With certainty, she pointed to her heart. I was amazed. Unlike my wife, I definitely experienced my sense of self in my head. I was fascinated to discover this difference between us, and wondered if Ochwiay Biano was right! I am restless, uneasy, always seeking, while my wife is more peaceful, measured and centred. Chief Ochwiay Biano and my wife shared the Bible’s understanding of the human person. And as the decades have passed, I have experienced, through prayer, my sense of self gradually shifting from my head to my heart, so if you were to ask me where did I locate myself I, too, would now point to my heart. The thoughts of the heart According to the Hebrew understanding of man in the Bible the heart is the organ of feelings, thoughts and decisions. God has given man a heart to think with (Si 17:6). The heart is the source of consciousness,
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